Writing Individual Fight Scenes
I have a lot of fight scenes in my book and there are more in the next ones. When I first started writing, I stuck in action-for-action like this: he punched his jaw, the other guy staggered backward, but lunged in and punched his enemy in the stomach. Whole paragraphs were written like this. While action-for-action is good, it shouldn't take up the whole fight and is only part of the concoction you're creating.
When I went through the first book, I found some fight scenes were better than others. I was wondering why. I made note of the good fight scenes and then I did a lot of reading.
In several blog posts, people talked about writing war. The authors said to zoom in onto one soldier and get into his head. Let somebody die in his arms, or whatever the case may be. Go into the individual fighting. But how do I do individual fights?
I thought of the authors I really loved who could make fight scenes between individuals. I went straight to Edgar Rice Burroughs. I read several of his Tarzan and Martian books and made notes. He makes the hero's opponent really strong and there is a major threat of death to the hero.
He gets into the heads of both opponents. What are their thoughts in the heat of the moment? What are their motives? He also doesn't always go action-for-action. He leaves that up to the reader's imagination a lot.
That rule goes for all kinds of writing and not just fight scenes.
Each fight is almost like a tiny story of its own. You can go through the opponents' state of mind at the beginning, middle, and end. Add in your details in between. After the fight is over, is there time to feel anything? Keep in mind that emotions after a fight can't take up too much time, especially if BS is going down and your character needs to escape. Of course, if it's the end of all the fighting, then have a field day.
Emotions, thoughts, actions, and details need to be balanced. Too much emotion and there's no fight scene. Too much action detail and nobody cares what's going on. Too many thoughts and it's like, "how in the world is this guy fighting?" Many times there are no thoughts. Fighting is short and to the point, so these things must be, too.
In other fight scenes, authors describe the gore and what exactly happened to the person's innards, or where the knife went through their body.
Mixing and matching is something you need to do, like with a salad or a sandwich, otherwise it gets boring. Showing and telling need to be balanced as well. 'He staggered into the wall as the floor swayed like a ship at sea' may or may not be better than 'he was losing a lot of blood.' Like Bob Ross said, "You have to make these big decisions."
Pulling the reader close into the fight is the goal, and not feel like they're in a helicopter watching things play out in confused fashion.
I've read some fight scenes with a lot of technical, this is how he twisted the guy's arm and then used this judo move in great detail to flip the guy over his head. I had no idea what was happening. I'm still not sure what in the world. I think he landed on his coccyx which is located at the bottom of some bone which is needed for--wow the author knows his human anatomy. Who cares! Personally it sounded like the author was showing off how he knew these technical things.
The skill is not knowing these technicalities, but making the reader see it and feel like they're a part of it.
Read fight scenes, make notes, and apply or not apply. What do you like? What do you not like? Take your time. Fight scenes take practice like everything else.
Remember, after all is said and done, this is a piece of art. Put all your love and heart into it. Form this piece of clay into a masterpiece.
Make it beautiful.
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